The Collected Poems of Idris Davies

by Idris Davies, Islwyn Jenkins (Editor)

For many, Idris Davies (1905–1953) was the archetypal poet of the Welsh Valleys, the poet of protest and passion. Though having the appeal of modern folksong, his work is also richly layered. It champions the ideals of a people struggling to come to terms with the great economic and religious changes of the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Rhymney, Davies worked underground as a miner before later becoming a teacher in London and South Wales. For Islwyn Jenkins, a close friend of the poet's and former Senior Lecturer at Trinity College, Carmarthen, the poetry of Idris Davies is "essentially that of a personal Welsh-English border experience." For Jim Perrin, who has written a new introduction to this collection, he is "the most significant and original Welsh poet to have written in English during the twentieth century."

"They are the best poetic document I know about a particular epoch in a particular place, and I think that they really have a claim to permanence… If all poets knew their proper material as he did, there would be less futile verse in the world." - T. S. Eliot

"This is poetry which in the best possible sense was meant to be popular; and it is also poetry which can speak to us about its time, but also about ours, as perhaps the best poetry should." - Paul Wright, Gwales.com

"The work is humane, dramatic, lyrical, sophisticated with a deceptive strength and a clear sense of rhythm." - Byron Beynon

Genres: Poetry

192 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2003

About the author

Idris Davies (1905–1953) was a Welsh poet who originally wrote in Welsh but later wrote exclusively in English.

He was the only poet to cover significant events of the early 20th century in the South Wales Valleys and the South Wales Coalfield and from a perspective literally at the coalface. He is now best known for the verses "Bells of Rhymney", from his 1938 Gwalia Deserta (meaning literally "Wasteland of Wales"), which were later adapted into a popular folk song.

Reviews

[J.C.]

My attention was caught in the preface to this collection of Idris Davies’ work by the comment that some critics “have praised him in ways that reduce him to versifier of regional and passing interest”. TS Eliot, however, while working for Faber & Faber, accepted three of his volumes for publication. The “damning indictment” that Davies was worth no more than the “voice of a generation” is soundly repudiated in the introduction by Islwyn Jenkins.
I am not a poetry critic and tend to accept it pretty much at face value. But this comment stayed in my mind as I read Idris Davies’ verses, some aloud in the South Wales accent of my childhood. Most of the poems have a simple metre that is really a song, because Welsh people do sing when they speak. However, many of the poems have lines that are longer and more prosaic, which I feel may be in part at least a product of his time. He was born in 1906 and died in 1953, not far away from where I was “pulled into this life” (Davies) in the same year. During Idris’ life, socialism was on the rise, and politics had become accessible to the working man. Political orators abounded. The ‘social’ poets, Eliot, Auden, MacNeice, Spender, wrote unromantic poetry where poetic value could be sacrificed for the sake of a rhyme that kept the whole thing moving along. The instances of this in Idris Davies’ poetry, therefore, are nothing unusual for the period and more famous poets adopted the style without being pilloried for it.
Davies, the son of a miner and a miner himself, lost his job after the General Strike of 1926 and educated himself in “lonely evenings of triumph and despair, in a little room in Rhymney” until he became a teacher. The literature and history with which he fed himself during that bleak time are evident throughout his work; the ancient heroes of Celtica, and those, such as William Butler Yeats, who invoked them. Davies wrote him a tribute in 1936. Yet some of the most successful poems are the personal and the autobiographical. I have quoted twice from “I was born in Rhymney”, written in 1943, which ends,

“And in this time of tumult
I can only hope and cry
That season shall follow season
And beauty shall not die.”

“Midnight”, revised in 1947, has a different note, of anguish for all that has been, and of despair.

“Then I wonder if beauty demands that men must be put away
In graves and in tombs before her profoundest peace can fill the night and day,
If all shall be perfect only when every town is under grass,
And nothing is left of our hearts and tongues after the loud years pass.”

These lines in themselves amply repudiate the patronising judgement upon Davies that he is merely the poet of the Welsh valleys. Personally I’d be proud to be called that, in any case. Davies’ poems referring to his childhood really resonated with me – and he does not shrink from criticism of the narrowness of the religious beliefs that were instilled into him and all of us who grew up in that background and in that century. Have you ever wondered whether poetry has any real power? I was going to vote for Jeremy Corbyn in the forthcoming Labour leadership election. Reading Davies’ poetry showed me that I could not do other than vote for Owen Smith, MP for Pontypridd, where I was born and bred. The power of verse: Q.E.D.

[Paul Jenkins]

Idris Davies was a Welsh speaking poet from Rhymney writing in English during the first half of the 20th century. In his early life he worked as a miner but lost his job after the miners' strike of 1926. An auto-didact he later trained as a teacher, moving to London for a while. Much of his output is about the mining valleys of South Wales and the struggles of the mining communities. He has a simple and clear style of writing, which has echoes of that of AE Houseman and his poems are infused with piercing social comment. I particularly loved these poems as they describe the world in which my father grew up. Thoroughly recommend this collection, particularly if you have any connection with South Wales.

[Jane]

One from the to read piles (why have one)? The first time I have read either Gwalia Deserta or The Angry Summer in full. Appreciated him much more as a wordsmith with this collection. But still works as a committed poet too.

[DEBORAH]

I am Welsh/ British American and am always looking for Welsh Poetry to read. This is a good one.